A University of York project on the site of Breary Banks in North Yorkshire

Developing concepts & aesthetics

To begin the design phase for our blog and brochure, we decided to channel our inspirations through a mood board on Pinterest. Adding our own pins to the collective board blended our individual ideas and initial inspiration. In doing so, we were able to combine the concept, mood, story, and colour palette. This provided a quick insight to how the aesthetic in the brochure will come together. To bring up images reflective of our ideas, we searched with tags such as ‘war time, Britain, Navvy, WW1, antique, retro, scent, tobacco, skylark, Leeds, Yorkshire, dales’. Searching through images responding to these tags allowed us to identify specifics and relate them to Breary Banks. For example, a sketch of a Skylark can evoke emotion as these nesting birds also settled at the site during the time Navvys and soldiers lived there. This brainstorm session also allowed us to experiment with colours on colour.adobe.com, we found this helpful in terms of eliminating colours that were not harmonious with each other. The brochure and blog’s colour palette was inspired by the natural green and purple tones found on the dales. The colours cream and black will also be incorporated via atlas maps.

After pinning war-time posters on the mood board we noticed a recurring theme, the use of three fonts and three colours. This has become iconic as key elements of a war-time style poster, our creative plan is to re-create this in our blog and brochure. Hopefully this reflection on war-time style print will transport our audience back to the war and navvy lifestyle, ultimately creating a meaningful and immersive experience. More creative ways to develop the depth of the visitor’s experience through the audio guide are to incorporate scents, textures and sounds, such as the cheep of a skylark, the smell of crackling bacon, and the textures in the rough surrounding environment. To apply these in our brochure we will use grey-scale original images and altered recent images, these alterations will follow an antiqued style which we believe compliments the original photographs’ colour palette.

Another creative approach to enhance the rustic concept will be the incorporation of sketches. A member of the group has volunteered to sketch a skylark or OXO mugs, an artefact previously recovered on the site. The sketches will possibly be drawn on tracing paper then scanned into the computer, this will further develop our rustic concept and confirm our documentary/illustrative approach. As a group we have agreed to create tangible links between the past and present, this will make the product feel like a scrapbook and hopefully evoke thought, such as, could this scrapbook have looked like one of the soldier’s own? Another way to do so in the blog and brochure is to fade an image of an antique atlas map, the editing will be performed on Photoshop. We were fortunate to receive a Photoshop tutorial from Wayne Britcliffe, resident VLE and computer pro in University of York.

Attached is a mosaic of Pinterest inspirations and a spider diagram presenting our thought process.

Written by Hermione Elderton.

In groups we began to discuss and brainstorm concepts and things that we wanted to include in the audio guide. The overall theme that we decided for the guide was daily life of the people at Breary Banks, which would be the Navvys and their families, the Leeds Pals and other soldiers training at these camps, and also the German prisoners who resided at this site. We decided it was important to include stories and possible personal accounts of the people who were at this site during its long history during the 20th century, as we wanted to evoke an emotional response from the audience. However, we wanted to get the balance right of factual, interesting information, stories and music to keep the audience interested. We planned out the possible route/stops for the audio guide deciding on 8 stops which had a mixture of all wanted elements, estimating it would be around 40 minutes, which is not too long as weather conditions can be terrible, and long enough to provide an enjoyable and informative experience for users. Research into accounts of personal accounts from the Breary Banks site, and interestingly, a German prisoner of war, diary kept by Johannes Rienau about his time at Breary Banks, provided an insight to every day life for both the British and the Germans, and we decided that we would involve this in our audio guide.

Attached is a story board and a spider diagram showing our ideas and concepts for our audio guide.